Last time printing at Edinburgh Printmakers steamie on Union street. Next time I see Harry (the etching press) he will be in a brand new home by the canal

Its been great - we will all miss it!

The new EP should open in April

A lady came into ADB and asked if I had any prints of Loch Lomond - well I had a sketch - I dug it out and made this print - the sketch was from 8 yrs ago!

This is my sketch of the wee blackhouse we stayed in

This is the collagraphic print

This is the plate

And this is the edition - all printed at home on my trusty little xcut. Framed up and displayed in the window of Angus Design and Build Bruntsfield.

Mum and I stayed in this Blackhouse at Gearrannan Lewis. We spent a week painting wee sketches of Lewis.
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Callanish of course - magical as ever.

Uig bay.

We had some sudden squalls - this is looking to Harris from the Berneray rd

Lots of rainbows
(Not mentioning storm Calum)

Lots of stones.

Lots of painting was done

Uschi, Louise and I are back in our wee pop up shop in Angus Design and Build 170 Bruntsfield Place. An artist will be there every Saturday 11-5.00pm and Sunday 11-4.00pm until sometime after Christmas. We have new stock - come and see it. Still very affordable.
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From the 30th of June to the 8th of July I drove or cycled out everyday to Prestonpans in East Lothian to the Pennypit centre. The Pennypit centre was lovely and I shared my exhibition space with James McCann, Amanda Owenson and Karen Monaghan. Pennypit was a ways away from most of the other exhibitions, which were up at Cockenzie and we were not on the main road and there was no bunting or signs off the main road, and it was difficult to find- so we did not get many visitors. Thankyou for coming the visitors who did find us, and thankyou for generously buying things. Nevertheless I enjoyed myself - I really liked Prestonpans (it was sunny) and I spent my time making plates and eating food from the lovely cafe - which I would recommend.

Amanda Owenson

James McCann

Karen Monoghan

This is a watercolour sketch I really like - I have been trying to make a collagraph of it for a while  - this is my third attempt!

This is the photo which goes some way to explain why I use watercolour sketches  - perhaps I should get better at taking photographs. I do use the photographs to help with detail.

This is the last attempt - the whole plate got badly contaminated with carborandum - and the trees suffered badly from blobiness. - just yuck

So this time I have made 2 plates - to keep the blue of the sky well away from the carborandum of the trees. The bottom plate will be only blue and white. The top plate will be yellow ochre, dark and light green and some dark brown. Bleed prints as I will be printing it on the xcut xpress - next Tuesday. Fingers crossed - watch this spot.

Printed this yesterday with images from images collected with Sarah in February 34x24cms

Other things I have been doing since I got back from the Red Caravan. - I have a fascination with knotwork. I have completed printing this edition of 10 Birch Knots
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This is a big (for me) knot 34x24cms of looking across loch Morlich to the Cairngorms.
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I use plates that I have finished working with and cut them up into knots - helps that the plates are made of card!

Having cut my oak tree up I have replaced it with an elm.
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I have made a larger version of a very popular print Crail. Unfortunately I put a little too much shellac (varnish) on so it is really hard to print.

Sarah Furby and I spent a fortnight in Forres living in the Red Caravan and working in Orchard Road Studios.  We were made very welcome by the other artists in the studio. It was great to work amongst them. Thankyou Caroline for enabling the residency and for your help.

We brought a complete print studio with us - including my trusty little xcut xpress shyly peeping out of the back of the campervan.

We visited Loch Morlich on the way and painted some watercolour sketches.

The next day we set up our corner of the studio with a wee print workshop and started making plates and printing them.

This is my watercolour sketch of Loch Morlich and one of the trial prints.

Next we visited Findhorn (ably guided by Rona Maclean) and did a couple more watercolour sketches.

Again sketch and trial print - the seals sang to us from the sand
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This is the plate and the print of looking back across the sand dunes to Findhorn.
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We visited Randolph' s Leap. It was bitterly cold but we managed a sketch each.

This is the sketch with the drypoint I made later  sadly I am not happy with the drypoint so I shall make a collagraph
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We drove south along the B9007 and sketched the Monadhliath mountains. This is the sketch with the consequent collagraph.

We drove back along Lochindorb and painted large very fast acrylics outside - using rushes and snow amongst other tools.

On Sunday 18th we went to Roseisle beach and made some watercolour sketches. I really liked the WW2 installations which were sliding down the dunes. I sketched a pill box and later made a collagraph from it.

On the way home we went to Dufus castle and sketched the Moray countryside.

On the last day I actually managed to make an edition of the Moray countryside. On my trusty little xcut xpress.

We had a brilliant time. We also visited distilleries, the Knockandoo wool mill, Hopetoun, Burghead and many other amazing places We went back to Findhorn and painted acrylics on the beach - whilst chasing the paper and the pallets and rescuing them from the sea - in February - only possible because it was sunny - Sunny Moray

When I got home I completed the editioning of 4 other plates. This is the Monadhliath.

These are the five collagraphs completed so far, mounted.
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